Ned, the canine star of ABC’s “Downward Dog,” isn’t pulling a star trip when cast and crew are told not to look him in the eye.

“It would make him nervous when people looked him in the eye,” says Ned’s owner and trainer, Nicole Handley, who adopted the 4-year-old Treeing Walker Coonhound mix from a no-kill shelter in Chicago. “For him, having such striking looks for so long … people are drawn to him. It looks like he’s staring straight into your soul. One of the rules for the people on the set is ‘Don’t look him in the eye.’ It really affects him.

“He’s like, ‘I don’t want to look at you.’ It’s hard to get animals to trust us — and they know if you’re not being genuine or there’s pressure.”

‘It’s hard to get animals to trust us — and they know if you’re not being genuine or there’s pressure.’

When Handley adopted Ned, who plays Martin on “Downward Dog” (Tuesdays at 8 p.m.) opposite Allison Tolman, he’d been at the shelter for over a year after arriving there from Mississippi (with a severe case of heartworm). “He suffered a severe case of anxiety and that’s partly why it was so hard for him to find a home,” says Handley. “He had a lot of nervous energy … and he was on anxiety meds as well, so we had to wean him off them to discover his true nature.”

Handley had roughly 12 weeks to get Ned camera-ready for his “Downward Dog” closeups. “When we’re on the set he takes visual and verbal cues from me,” says the LA-based Handley, who’s been training animals for movies and television for 23 years.

“When the actors are talking I’ll give him visual cues, which is still very distracting for the actors because they’re seeing someone move around in their eyeline,” she says. “I have to be hiding behind a couch or behind a doorway. Ned’s learning more and more commands with each episode, like ‘sit,’ ‘stay,’ ‘come’ … he’s learning more intricate stuff like moving his head up and down, circling into his dog bed, nudging [Tolman] or scratching the door.” The show uses statue-type Ned “stand-ins” for camera and lighting placement. “Those have to be cleared off the set and put away in plastic bags so he can’t smell them,” Handley says. “Or he’ll lose his mind and all he’ll want to do is look for them. He’s just obsessed.”

Each of the scenes in which Ned “talks” to the camera (courtesy of CGI) have to be filmed individually. “Each time he has to do specific setups for the talking ‘Martin,’” says Handley. “It’s one of the most challenging things. He has to sit there and keep eye contact with the camera, keep still and not open his mouth — which isn’t so easy when it’s 90 degrees outside and he’s been running and panting.”

When he’s not in LA with Handley, Ned is with her at her home in Central Oregon. “That’s where he spends the majority of his time, on 15 acres with a pond and open fields,” she says. “I have five dogs, so Ned has companions … and I have a 7-year-old daughter who’s also helped change his life.

“I wasn’t sure in the beginning if he was OK with children, but he sleeps in her bed and steals her stuffed animals.”